Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how stuff Works, and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things about technology is how we
Speaker 1: can provide people with capabilities they otherwise might not possess
Speaker 1: or might not be able to tap into. For all
Speaker 1: walks of life. It can open up access to incredible
Speaker 1: volumes of knowledge and expertise. It can boost our ability
Speaker 1: to do everything from travel faster to figuring out what
Speaker 1: book we should read next. And it can enhance the
Speaker 1: lives of people who live with injuries, disabilities, or other
Speaker 1: factors that make our world a little more challenging to
Speaker 1: navigate for them than for other people. Which brings us
Speaker 1: to today's topic, which is a request from tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Listener can can ask me this quite some time ago,
Speaker 1: so I apologize for how long it's taken me to
Speaker 1: get to this. But Ken wanted to know about the development, design,
Speaker 1: and deployment of accessible technology. That is, technology meant to
Speaker 1: provide accessibility to people who might otherwise have a challenge
Speaker 1: accessing that technology. They might have a visual impairment or
Speaker 1: hearing impairment, or health condition or injury that prevents them
Speaker 1: from accessing technology the way other people do. So this
Speaker 1: episode is all about making tech accessible, and this is
Speaker 1: just an overview because accessible tech covers an enormous spectrum
Speaker 1: of approaches and technologies. So I may go into further
Speaker 1: detail on some of these in future episodes, but this
Speaker 1: is kind of a very high level look at the
Speaker 1: the whole idea of accessible technology, with just a few
Speaker 1: examples thrown in. So I want to stress that this
Speaker 1: is something that can be really difficult to do well.
Speaker 1: And part of that is just because the designers and
Speaker 1: engineers who are responsible for making the hardware and software
Speaker 1: that we rely upon might not have the same challenges
Speaker 1: as some of the people who will be using that
Speaker 1: technology do, and so those designers and engineers might make
Speaker 1: assumptions about how that tech needs to be used, and
Speaker 1: sometimes those assumptions can exclude people who have these problems,
Speaker 1: these issues, these disabilities, these challenges. I don't want to
Speaker 1: classify everything as a problem. I'm just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: people who are incapable of accessing the technology the way
Speaker 1: everyone else tends to do. The intent these designers might
Speaker 1: have is to help, and even if they're trying to
Speaker 1: design assistive technology specifically for that purpose, the execution can
Speaker 1: sometimes be clunky or inelegant, or it fails to make
Speaker 1: the technology more accessible at all. I think it's of
Speaker 1: critical importance that designers work with people whose life experience
Speaker 1: mirrors that of those who actually uh do have those challenges, right, So,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to design accessibility technology to help with
Speaker 1: people who have visual impairments, it's important to have people
Speaker 1: working with you on the development who also have those
Speaker 1: visual impairments to give you real time feedback on designs
Speaker 1: to make sure that the technology you're creating actually does
Speaker 1: what was intended. So in the United States, there are
Speaker 1: no laws that mandate accessibility with tech hardware. In general,
Speaker 1: no company is legally required to make certain the technology
Speaker 1: it creates is accessible to those who are differently abled,
Speaker 1: and there's a lack of standards and expertise in the
Speaker 1: field in general, a lack of awareness and education in
Speaker 1: the field, and that complicates matters. It is a little
Speaker 1: different if you happen to work for the federal government
Speaker 1: in the United States, there there is a legal basis
Speaker 1: for accessibility, but only if you're working for the federal government.
Speaker 1: Section five oh eight Standards for Electronic and Information Technology
Speaker 1: states that quote, when federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or
Speaker 1: use electronic and information technology, federal employees with disabilities have
Speaker 1: access to and use of information and data that is
Speaker 1: comparable to the access and use by federal employees who
Speaker 1: are not individuals with disabilities, unless and undoe burden would
Speaker 1: be imposed on the agency end quote. So it's saying,
Speaker 1: anytime you're going to be uh incorporating technology into a
Speaker 1: federal agency, there must be consideration put toward making that
Speaker 1: accessible to people who have disabilities. But that puts the
Speaker 1: burden more on the agency than the companies that are
Speaker 1: making the technology, Right Like, unless the federal agency is
Speaker 1: making its own technology, it's outsourcing that. And when it
Speaker 1: outsources it, it may mean that the agency has to
Speaker 1: take a very close look at the different competing products
Speaker 1: that are on the market, and it may very well
Speaker 1: mean that the federal agency will make a choice of
Speaker 1: a product not because it was the best cost for
Speaker 1: what they needed to do, but because it fit this
Speaker 1: other requirement more than the competitors did. It does create
Speaker 1: an incentive. But this is just a policy that only
Speaker 1: applies to people who work for the federal government. It
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to state governments or local governments, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to consumer products in general. But things are
Speaker 1: not dire. There are a lot of companies, major companies
Speaker 1: that are working very hard to make certain that the
Speaker 1: technolog ology they create is accessible to people of all abilities.
Speaker 1: More on those efforts in a bit. One other thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention is that accessible technology is distantly
Speaker 1: related to another concept called regionalization. This refers to adapting
Speaker 1: technology so is meaningful and helpful to people in different
Speaker 1: parts of the world. Again, people who speak a different
Speaker 1: language than the developers do, or who live in a
Speaker 1: culture that has different values and therefore different needs, different challenges.
Speaker 1: Those require special consideration. Technology is not always a one
Speaker 1: size fits all solutions. Sometimes you have to tweak things
Speaker 1: for the end user. And I'll probably do a dedicated
Speaker 1: episode about regionalization in the future because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different aspects to that as well, from software to hardware.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to accessibility. I'd like to quote
Speaker 1: the organization earn E a r N that stands for
Speaker 1: employer Assistant and Resource Network on disability inclusion, as they
Speaker 1: lay out in their web page about technological accessibility quote
Speaker 1: when talking about technology, accessible means tools that can be
Speaker 1: used successfully by people with a wide range of abilities
Speaker 1: and disabilities. When technology is accessible, each user is able
Speaker 1: to interact with it in ways that work best for
Speaker 1: him or her. Accessible technology is either directly accessible, whereby
Speaker 1: it is usable without additional assistive technology a t or
Speaker 1: it is compatible with a system of technology. For example,
Speaker 1: a mobile smartphone with a built in screen reader is
Speaker 1: directly accessible, whereas a website that can be navigated effectively
Speaker 1: by people with visual impairments using a screen reader is
Speaker 1: a syste of technology compatible. Now, another thing I want
Speaker 1: to mention early on is another tool called edge, which
Speaker 1: in North America is a technology assessment tool developed by
Speaker 1: the Urban Libraries Council. The ULC creates a place for
Speaker 1: libraries to share and learn from best practices in numerous
Speaker 1: fields that relate to libraries and communities. And to all
Speaker 1: you librarians out there, thank you. You guys are awesome.
Speaker 1: And hey, a former tech stuff host is among your number.
Speaker 1: One of our former tech stuff hosts is a librarian.
Speaker 1: So back to edge and to talk about what's important
Speaker 1: here for this podcast. The Edge Toolkit includes many different
Speaker 1: benchmarks to guide libraries in making the best use of
Speaker 1: technology in order to help communities, and that includes everything
Speaker 1: from training people to become more tech savvy, to increase
Speaker 1: digital literacy, provide access to the Internet, and other valuable
Speaker 1: services that are absolutely crucial to interact with society today. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very easy to get left behind if you
Speaker 1: are not of a particular demographic, right. I come from
Speaker 1: a very rural part of Georgia. I live in Atlanta now,
Speaker 1: but I come from a very rural community. When I
Speaker 1: was growing up, it was extremely rural, to the point
Speaker 1: where we had cattle farms and chicken farms around us,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I was in a little subdivision,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like I was miles away from everybody,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people didn't have access to technology.
Speaker 1: And granted, the Internet was not really a big thing
Speaker 1: when I was growing up. I'm old enough to predate
Speaker 1: when the Internet was it was prevalent, but even to
Speaker 1: this day, people in those communities don't necessarily have access
Speaker 1: on a daily basis to the technology that a lot
Speaker 1: of us take for granted and their local libraries act
Speaker 1: as a community center and a source of contact for
Speaker 1: that kind of technology. They can also serve as a
Speaker 1: way for people to become more educated about that technology
Speaker 1: so that they can make meaningful contributions in a world
Speaker 1: that is increasingly reliant on that tech. And so libraries
Speaker 1: are one of those points where people aren't being left
Speaker 1: behind because they have the access to those libraries. This
Speaker 1: is Jonathan on a soapbox saying libraries are really important more.
Speaker 1: It's more than just checking out books, which by the way,
Speaker 1: also really important, But it's more than that anyway. Let's
Speaker 1: get back to the benchmarks. There's a specific one called
Speaker 1: benchmark eleven that's about accessibility with technology. The core statement
Speaker 1: for benchmark eleven is libraries ensure participation in digital technology
Speaker 1: for people with disabilities. So to meet that benchmark, that
Speaker 1: libraries should in fact also provide access to people who
Speaker 1: have disabilities, provide access of technology to peopleho have disabilities.
Speaker 1: The library must have at least one public terminal has
Speaker 1: assisted of technology incorporated for the visually impaired. It has
Speaker 1: to have a public terminal that is accessible for people
Speaker 1: who have motor and dexterity impronments. It needs to have
Speaker 1: a workstation that can accommodate people who are in a
Speaker 1: wheelchair or other mobility vehicle, that kind of thing, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it needs to have these points of access for
Speaker 1: people who otherwise would be left out. And I think
Speaker 1: it's valuable to look at the edge tool, not just
Speaker 1: to acknowledge how important libraries are and uh and because
Speaker 1: me it's clear that I think they are very important,
Speaker 1: but because they lay out goals, they get the conversation
Speaker 1: rolling about making technology accessible to all people. Now, some
Speaker 1: areas of tech are ahead of the game compared to others,
Speaker 1: like the world Wide Web. So the Worldwide Web Consortium
Speaker 1: or W three C formed back in Nino with the
Speaker 1: goal to develop standardized protocols for the evolution of the
Speaker 1: Web to make sure that it moved forward in a
Speaker 1: way that was uh easily distributed and developed so that
Speaker 1: you didn't have a bunch of splintered experiences. They wanted
Speaker 1: something that was going to be interoperable across the entire web.
Speaker 1: One of the four domains that covers is the Web
Speaker 1: Accessibility Initiative or w a I, and that has five
Speaker 1: primary purposes to ensure that web tech supports accessibility, to
Speaker 1: develop guidelines for accessibility, to develop tools to evaluate and
Speaker 1: facilitate accessibility, to conduct education and outreach, and finally to
Speaker 1: coordinate with research and development. So as such, the W
Speaker 1: three C has issued guidelines for Web content accessibility to
Speaker 1: help ensure that developers make sites and services that are
Speaker 1: in fact accessible for a broad range of people. And
Speaker 1: those guidelines are pretty exhaustive. They have sixty five checkpoints
Speaker 1: and each checkpoint has an assigned priority between one and three.
Speaker 1: A Priority one checkpoint is one that tackles a barrier
Speaker 1: that would make access impossible for one or more groups
Speaker 1: of people, so it identifies something that could potentially make
Speaker 1: technology completely inaccessible too an entire group. Priorities two and
Speaker 1: three mark challenges that would make it difficult, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily impossible, for one or more groups to access the
Speaker 1: web content. And this is a big issue UH in general,
Speaker 1: just the idea of accessibility. A two thousand eleven report
Speaker 1: from the University of New Hampshire's Institute on Disability saw
Speaker 1: that people with disabilities make up nineteen of the United
Speaker 1: States population. Now that report points out that if people
Speaker 1: with disabilities were recognized as a minority group, that would
Speaker 1: actually be the largest minority group in the United States.
Speaker 1: It represents a large population of people, and without these
Speaker 1: UH considerations for excess stability, that would be nearly one
Speaker 1: fifth of all citizens of the United States left out
Speaker 1: of being able to access that technology. So that's why
Speaker 1: this is of critical importance. When I come back, I'll
Speaker 1: give you some more examples of some of the types
Speaker 1: of assistive technology and accessible technology that are out there,
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: For people who have visual impairments, there are a variety
Speaker 1: of assistive technologies and they range from ways to help
Speaker 1: people with limited vision to ways to help people who
Speaker 1: have no site at all. And one of the ones
Speaker 1: that is a fairly simple implementation is screen magnification systems,
Speaker 1: and these are digital screen magnification systems. They enlarge text
Speaker 1: and graphics on the computer screen make it easier for
Speaker 1: people who have paired vision to read and see things.
Speaker 1: So it does act like a magnifying class. Typically, a
Speaker 1: user will move a cursor over the page using keyboard
Speaker 1: strokes or a mouse, and wherever the cursor is, that's
Speaker 1: the area that will increase in size to make it
Speaker 1: easier to see, so you can scan across the page
Speaker 1: as if you're using a magnifying glass and you're reading
Speaker 1: text on a piece of paper. Some systems also will
Speaker 1: include things like a a an option to scroll down
Speaker 1: the page at a predefined rate, so that you don't
Speaker 1: have to just sit there and and babysit the mouse
Speaker 1: and or keyboard and move the cursor manually. It'll move
Speaker 1: automatically at a speed that you've already determined, so that
Speaker 1: you can just read along. Many will also offer a
Speaker 1: contrast adjustment so that the highlighted or magnified text or
Speaker 1: image stands out more dramatically against the background. Here in
Speaker 1: Georgia are electronic voting systems have that kind of capability
Speaker 1: built into them, which is a good thing. But pretty
Speaker 1: much everything else about those electronic voting kiosks isn't so great. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are a very old and vulnerable technology, but that's
Speaker 1: a matter for another podcast. The accessibility features of that
Speaker 1: technology are good, so I want to stress that's the
Speaker 1: rest of it that may not be so great. Operating
Speaker 1: systems like Windows, and it's not just Windows, just saying
Speaker 1: Windows does have this have accessibility features that can adjust
Speaker 1: font size, resolution, scroll bars, icons, color scheme, and more.
Speaker 1: Mac Os has a similar series of options, all designed
Speaker 1: to make use of that technology more uh well easier
Speaker 1: for people who have visual impairments. Uh. Windows also or
Speaker 1: vision impairments. I guess I should say visual impairments is
Speaker 1: a improper way of saying it, but vision impairments. Windows
Speaker 1: also has a screen magnifier feature built in. It's not
Speaker 1: the only U BRING system to do this, but again
Speaker 1: it has that. There are also screen reader technologies. Essentially
Speaker 1: that gets down to sort of a text to speech
Speaker 1: program that can read out text to a user. I've
Speaker 1: definitely engaged that by accident in the past. Found it
Speaker 1: pretty interesting that it was a integrated feature. Now I
Speaker 1: don't need a screen reader, but the fact that it
Speaker 1: was built into the operating system did impress me. It
Speaker 1: meant that the designers were thinking ahead and wanted to
Speaker 1: have that capability to be standard and not something a
Speaker 1: user would need to add on as an option. Apple
Speaker 1: has a feature called voice over. It's frequently cited as
Speaker 1: an innovative assistive technology. Voiceover gives auditory descriptions of what
Speaker 1: is on a screen, including all the different on screen
Speaker 1: elements such as on screen controls, and it can work
Speaker 1: with apps as well. Now that requires developers to actually
Speaker 1: tag the various elements in their apps so that the
Speaker 1: voiceover function can effectively relay that information to the user.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like meta information at specific meta
Speaker 1: information for voiceover. So, for example, a play button on
Speaker 1: an app that would initiate a sound would need an
Speaker 1: appropriate tag so that the voiceover system could alert the
Speaker 1: user about the function and relative position of the button.
Speaker 1: Then there are things like refreshable brail displays that provides
Speaker 1: access to information on a computer display through brail. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this time we're talking about a computer display that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily it's it's not a screen. It's typically a
Speaker 1: a flat surface that has little holes through which retractable
Speaker 1: pins rounded pins can extend up and then form characters
Speaker 1: in brail. And a typical brail display can show around
Speaker 1: eighty characters at a time. It's refreshable because the pins
Speaker 1: can fall or rise up and form different characters, and
Speaker 1: they'll do this as you move a cursor around the screen,
Speaker 1: So you can scan over a screen and these characters
Speaker 1: will change under your fingertips and you can read Brail
Speaker 1: that way. The history of Brail, by the way, is
Speaker 1: pretty darn interesting all on its own, so here's a
Speaker 1: quick tangent about the history of Braille. Louis Braill was
Speaker 1: a young man in France born in eighteen o nine
Speaker 1: who suffered a childhood injury at the age of three,
Speaker 1: and it left him blind. He attended school and he
Speaker 1: would listen very carefully to lessons. He was a good student,
Speaker 1: and then went on to attend the Royal Institution for
Speaker 1: Blind Youths in Paris UH and that school owned a
Speaker 1: few books that had raised print on them. That raised
Speaker 1: print was essentially created by stamping pages with copper wire
Speaker 1: that was bent in the shape of letters, so it
Speaker 1: was just, you know, the letters of the alphabet UH
Speaker 1: embossed essentially on pieces of paper. Braill heard a story
Speaker 1: about a soldier named Captain Charles Barbier de la Sere.
Speaker 1: He was a captain in the French army who had
Speaker 1: developed a system of writing for soldiers so that they
Speaker 1: could send and read messages even at nighttime without turning
Speaker 1: on any lights, because a light would give away your position,
Speaker 1: which in war time is not great. So this system
Speaker 1: used raised dots and dashes on paper. You would create
Speaker 1: these raised elements and then by running your finger across
Speaker 1: you could read the message. So Braile decided to adopt
Speaker 1: that method when developing his own system of writing. In
Speaker 1: eighty nine, Louis published the first book written in Brail,
Speaker 1: and he would later add some more characters to his
Speaker 1: system to incorporate stuff like musical notation and mathematics, and
Speaker 1: a system would be tweaked over the decades that followed.
Speaker 1: It really only began to get widespread adoption well after
Speaker 1: his death in eighteen fifty two. But flash forward to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and a company called Pop and Meyer and
Speaker 1: a man named Dr Werner Bolt of dortmun University in
Speaker 1: Germany created a refreshable Brail display called Braile X. And
Speaker 1: so it's like Brail with an X at the end.
Speaker 1: It was a stand alone system for information storage and retrieval,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it was a computer peripheral in itself.
Speaker 1: Was a system that would allow you to create information
Speaker 1: and store it in Brail, and to retrieve information and
Speaker 1: have it displayed in Brail. When writing on the device,
Speaker 1: you would assign a code word to that information, and
Speaker 1: it was essentially a file name, so you could call
Speaker 1: up a code word or file name and then retrieve
Speaker 1: the information and read it in brail. It originally used
Speaker 1: an audio cassette data storage system, so would store everything
Speaker 1: on magnetic tape, and then later models would upgrade to
Speaker 1: a floppy disk system. Later still it would include a
Speaker 1: serial port which would allow the user to connect to
Speaker 1: the device to other peripherals like a computer system or
Speaker 1: a brail emboss or or brail printer, so you could
Speaker 1: actually print your workout on paper. The first refreshable brail
Speaker 1: display for users in the United States was the Versa
Speaker 1: Brail that did not launch till night teen e two,
Speaker 1: and the National Federation of the Blind released NFB Trands,
Speaker 1: which was a brail translation program in nineteen eighty. That
Speaker 1: program could translate text into brail and send it to
Speaker 1: a special brail embosser or brail printer. That original program
Speaker 1: sold for hundreds of dollars when it first came out,
Speaker 1: but in nine its utility was considered so important that
Speaker 1: the NFB released the software to the public domain. In
Speaker 1: Dr Kenneth Yearnigan opened up the International Brail and Technology
Speaker 1: Center for the Blind at the National Federation of the
Speaker 1: Blind Headquarters, and that center evaluates assistive technology for the blind,
Speaker 1: so it puts it to the test to make certain
Speaker 1: that the technology does in fact help as opposed to
Speaker 1: just become a frustration or or an impediment to using technology.
Speaker 1: And as you would expect, this technology found its way
Speaker 1: into other foreim factors, including portable devices. In fact, really
Speaker 1: early and it found its way into portable devices. In
Speaker 1: seven the Brail and Speak became an early forerunner of
Speaker 1: the personal digital assistant, and this was all for the blind.
Speaker 1: This became the first of a class of devices called
Speaker 1: note takers, and it had a speaker and a six
Speaker 1: key Brail keyboard, and it was made in Germany, so
Speaker 1: it had a data system where it could speak to you.
Speaker 1: And because it was made in Germany, the system actually
Speaker 1: had a bit of a German accent and it synth
Speaker 1: the size speech, which is kind of interesting. I watched
Speaker 1: a video that played some of the audio from one
Speaker 1: of these devices. Typing would involve pressing key combinations to
Speaker 1: access options and type in letters and I could save
Speaker 1: information and bring you back to it later. And this
Speaker 1: was all before personal digital assistants would emerge. For cited
Speaker 1: users there have been many note takers since that one
Speaker 1: way back in There's been some cool pieces of technology
Speaker 1: to incorporate brail displays over the years. One recent one
Speaker 1: I've seen that I thought was pretty interesting was the
Speaker 1: dot watch, which I think debuted in TV. It's a
Speaker 1: smart watch with its own refreshable brail display. So it
Speaker 1: looks like a big white watch face with a little
Speaker 1: little round circles cut into the watch face which through
Speaker 1: which the pens can extend and create the various characters
Speaker 1: in brail. The watch thus can can display time, it
Speaker 1: can alert you to messages that can actually spell out messages.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a smart watch, and it's pretty nifty
Speaker 1: and concept. I have no, well, no idea how well
Speaker 1: it performs in the wild. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: works as well as the concept UH would have you think,
Speaker 1: but I love the idea. I hope it works as
Speaker 1: well as the videos suggest it does, because I think
Speaker 1: it's super cool to have a brail smart watch. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a lot more to talk about with accessibility technology,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our
Speaker 1: sponsors for the Heart of Hearing and the Deaf Community.
Speaker 1: Assistive Technology can include things like captions and transcripts. Automatic
Speaker 1: systems that generate captions and transcripts do exist. They typically
Speaker 1: use speech recognition technology to analyze speech and try to
Speaker 1: create text based on that. They are a variable quality.
Speaker 1: I've seen some caption programs that are pretty good, and
Speaker 1: I've seen others that end up telling a story that
Speaker 1: turns out to be very different from the one that's
Speaker 1: being delivered by audio, which could be funny while you're
Speaker 1: watching it if you're able to hear, you know, you're
Speaker 1: able to hear the difference, and you're reading the text
Speaker 1: and you're seeing where it's not matching up, and you're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of funny. But if that's the way that
Speaker 1: you get the information, it's really frustrating. It is it
Speaker 1: is not accessible, it is not inclusive. It's excluding you,
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine how uh upsetting that's got to
Speaker 1: be after a while, when you realize as you're reading
Speaker 1: in you're like, there's no way that's what that person
Speaker 1: is saying, because it doesn't make any sense. But those
Speaker 1: are technologies that are getting wider us, and as speech
Speaker 1: recognition gets better, I will expect that we'll see those
Speaker 1: error rates go down and it will become less of
Speaker 1: a frustrating experience. But in the meantime that is a problem. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of UH services out there that actually
Speaker 1: use human beings to create transcripts and captions, where it's
Speaker 1: someone listening to the content and actually typing it out,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be a little more reliable in general,
Speaker 1: depending upon the content they're listening to, the dialect or
Speaker 1: accent that is being spoken, and the home dialect or
Speaker 1: accent of the person doing the transcription, because sometimes you
Speaker 1: listen to someone from a different part of the country
Speaker 1: or a different part of the world, and it becomes
Speaker 1: a real challenge to figure out what the heck they're saying.
Speaker 1: I should know, I married a woman from Philadelphia, and
Speaker 1: there are days where we just don't understand each other.
Speaker 1: She talks faster than I can hear. To be fair,
Speaker 1: we Southerners are, We're slow talking people. So another technology
Speaker 1: that is often used for accessibility is haptic feedback technology.
Speaker 1: Haptics referred to feedback that engages the sense of touch.
Speaker 1: So typically it involves a rotating weight that's slightly off center,
Speaker 1: and so when it rotates, it creates vibration or a
Speaker 1: rumble sensation. This is the technology that's inside a phone
Speaker 1: to create the vibrate feature or in a rumble feature
Speaker 1: in a video game controller uses the same sort of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's a very common use of haptics, and they're often
Speaker 1: incorporated into things like robotic prosthetics, which help give pressure
Speaker 1: feedback to users so that they can get a sense
Speaker 1: of important informations just how hard a robotic hand is
Speaker 1: gripping an object. So if you have a robotic prosthetic,
Speaker 1: let's say you've got a robotic arm, and it gives
Speaker 1: you the capability of picking up different objects, and you
Speaker 1: can pick up a whole variety of things that a
Speaker 1: variety of weights. You know, ideally you want to have
Speaker 1: a robotic prosthetic that is as capable as the average
Speaker 1: human's arm is. Then you need to have some sort
Speaker 1: of feedback to let you know how hard you are
Speaker 1: gripping the thing right, so that way you're not going
Speaker 1: to cause damage to something. If you're picking up let's
Speaker 1: say a lightbulb, you don't want to squeeze it so
Speaker 1: hard that you break it. But if you're picking up
Speaker 1: a brick, you want to make sure the grip is
Speaker 1: strong enough to actually lift the brick. So that's frequently
Speaker 1: used as a feedback mechanism to alert the user how
Speaker 1: much force is being exerted by that robotic prosthetic. It's
Speaker 1: also used in systems to help visually impaired people navigate
Speaker 1: through different environments. I've seen some videos of this. I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not aware of any technology that's out in
Speaker 1: the wild beyond the prototype stage, but I've seen this
Speaker 1: approach and I think it's fascinating. It provides haptic feedback
Speaker 1: systems that are hooked up to optical sensors cameras, essentially,
Speaker 1: so the wearer can walk around where who has a
Speaker 1: impairment in their in their vision, They're walking around and
Speaker 1: whenever they get close to an obstacle that's picked up
Speaker 1: by the optical sensors, they get feedback. They get a
Speaker 1: vibration that tells them, oh, you're getting close to something,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a table or some stairs or something. And
Speaker 1: it's sort of like spidy sense in a way, which
Speaker 1: I think is pretty interesting. But again, I'm not aware
Speaker 1: of any technology on the wild that people have access
Speaker 1: to easily. I have seen laboratory videos of this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Uh, there's so much more we can talk about. UM,
Speaker 1: I haven't really touched on mobility issues. There are many
Speaker 1: technologies designed to help people who have challenges in moving
Speaker 1: on their own to operate technology. These range from Bluetooth
Speaker 1: controllers that can map app commands to simple switches that
Speaker 1: some one might operate with a foot or a finger,
Speaker 1: um or even their mouth. These sort of devices do exist.
Speaker 1: These switches do exist, and mapping them to apps allows
Speaker 1: people to navigate that technology and that it improves accessibility. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are all these other types of apparatus that people
Speaker 1: might depend upon, including things like mouth sticks or head
Speaker 1: pointers that can allow them to interface with computers and
Speaker 1: other devices. Uh. There's eye tracking technology that can allow
Speaker 1: someone with mobility issues to take control of the device
Speaker 1: using their eyes to navigate or to type out messages.
Speaker 1: There are brain computer interface designs that are the next
Speaker 1: step out. They would interface directly with a brain to
Speaker 1: send commands from someone's brain to a computer system to
Speaker 1: create some sort of effect. Those are still fairly rare,
Speaker 1: and they're still very much in the testing phase for
Speaker 1: a lot of different use cases. But we've seen some
Speaker 1: incredible advances in that it does require a very long
Speaker 1: session of training, not just the person who's using the technology,
Speaker 1: but the technology itself to interpret the person's UH commands,
Speaker 1: because our brains when we send commands are not doing
Speaker 1: it in a in a precisely identical way. So it
Speaker 1: actually requires quite a bit of adaptation and tweaking to
Speaker 1: get the system tuned just right to the specific and
Speaker 1: but it does have the potential to really improve accessibility. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really exciting stuff. Some R and D labs are
Speaker 1: incorporating various ways to simulate these challenges so that a
Speaker 1: person a designer or an engineer who may not have
Speaker 1: these sort of disabilities or other issues, can simulate that
Speaker 1: and see what it's like to interact with their technology
Speaker 1: with that simulated disability. So, for example, you might have
Speaker 1: gloves that limit hand mobility, or you might have goggles
Speaker 1: that reproduce color blindness, and then you try to navigate
Speaker 1: your product, your technology, and you see where the challenges
Speaker 1: may be and you think, oh, we need to fix
Speaker 1: this because I didn't realize that because I made this design,
Speaker 1: you can't effectively see a very important element on the
Speaker 1: website because people who have color blindness. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to to differentiate these colors I've picked out,
Speaker 1: so it may require either creating an alternative so that
Speaker 1: people who are color blind are able to see it,
Speaker 1: or just changing the design entirely. All of it is
Speaker 1: meant to get designers to think outside of their own
Speaker 1: experience when they're creating products like hardware and software to
Speaker 1: make sure it's accessible to that larger user base. UM
Speaker 1: there's an organization that I think is really important that's
Speaker 1: going to help a lot called Teach access It's working
Speaker 1: to create tools and curricula to introduce accessibility design in
Speaker 1: education in academia. So ultimately the goal is to create courses,
Speaker 1: educational courses that would be part of your design education
Speaker 1: when you were starting to look into going into this
Speaker 1: sort of field, and to learn about accessibility design while
Speaker 1: you're still in school. And the group hopes to encourage
Speaker 1: the engineers and designers of tomorrow to take accessibility into
Speaker 1: consideration as a core design principle, not as something you
Speaker 1: add on at the very end, but something that's incorporated
Speaker 1: from the beginning. The group's website asserts that a lack
Speaker 1: of understanding about basic accessibility issues presents a huge challenge
Speaker 1: today and that by creating these curricula, these courses that
Speaker 1: can be incorporated into a student's work, much of that
Speaker 1: can be mended. And this goes back to what I
Speaker 1: was saying at the beginning of the show. Designers draw
Speaker 1: primarily upon their own experience, their own life experience when
Speaker 1: they're building their tools and their products, and it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of discipline and effort to step outside of
Speaker 1: your own world experience and to create stuff that's for everyone,
Speaker 1: not just people who happen to think and behave the
Speaker 1: way you do. And again, this isn't coming from any
Speaker 1: sort of exclusionary mindset necessarily. It's not like people are
Speaker 1: trying to create stuff that's that's excluding others. You can
Speaker 1: probably think of a few different companies that have made
Speaker 1: products that appeal to a certain niche audience that happens
Speaker 1: to be similar to the people who made those products. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I'm gonna throw Google under the bus here. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm an Android user. I use a lot of Google products,
Speaker 1: and I've come to the conclusion that many of their
Speaker 1: especially their web based products, many of their web based
Speaker 1: products were made by engineers for engineers, and that people
Speaker 1: who were not of the engineering mindset may have found
Speaker 1: some of those products and services challenging to navigate or
Speaker 1: counterintuitive or non intuitive, and as a result, those various
Speaker 1: products and services didn't get widespread adoption. And so it's
Speaker 1: become kind of a longstanding joke that Google would introduce
Speaker 1: a new product online product and then within three or
Speaker 1: four years discontinue it because of lack of adoption. But
Speaker 1: I think a large part of that was because some
Speaker 1: of the design was while it made perfect sense to
Speaker 1: the people who were making the product, did not necessarily
Speaker 1: make sense to other people from different experiences. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't that the products were bad, It's just that they
Speaker 1: were not accessible to everybody. Teach access has grown out
Speaker 1: of efforts from accessibility teams that were founded in Yahoo
Speaker 1: and Facebook, but now there are lots and lots of
Speaker 1: companies and institutions that are part of it, like Stanford, Microsoft, Twitter, Adobe,
Speaker 1: Google is part of it, LinkedIn A T and T,
Speaker 1: A whole bunch of different companies and organizations are part
Speaker 1: of this initiative. It's exciting to see companies take such
Speaker 1: an active role in a holistic approach to increasing accessibility.
Speaker 1: Acknowledging the education and incorporation into fundamental design strategies is
Speaker 1: a really good start. And there are two really big
Speaker 1: reasons that I am so passionate about this. You know,
Speaker 1: I know I've talked about this kind of thing and
Speaker 1: a very touchy feely kind of way that some people
Speaker 1: might find off putting, but uh, frankly, I don't care,
Speaker 1: because I think the two things that really drive my
Speaker 1: passion in this is. First, there's compassion. I want inclusions
Speaker 1: so that people are not frustrated, they're not isolated because
Speaker 1: of the design of technology. I want them to be
Speaker 1: able to enjoy the benefits of technology, to flourish in
Speaker 1: part because technology is allowing them to do so in
Speaker 1: ways they could not otherwise. I want that to be
Speaker 1: the case. And from a selfish perspective, I want it
Speaker 1: because you can't even imagine the contributions people might be
Speaker 1: able to make if they just have access to technology
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. You never know who's going to
Speaker 1: come up with the next incredible innovation or next scientific principle.
Speaker 1: Imagine if Stephen Hawking had been silenced due to his
Speaker 1: uh A L s, If if he had been rendered
Speaker 1: incapable of communicating without the use of technology, or even
Speaker 1: with the use of technology. If he could not communicate,
Speaker 1: it would have not just been a terrible personal tragedy
Speaker 1: for him, because of course it would be, and for
Speaker 1: his family, it would also have left a gap in
Speaker 1: scientific discourse that would have been a terrible detriment for everybody.
Speaker 1: So I think accessible technology is important for everyone, not
Speaker 1: just the people that directly benefit from it, but from everybody,
Speaker 1: because we can all stand to benefit in the long
Speaker 1: run in ways that we can't imagine. Here's here's a
Speaker 1: simple and silly, somewhat silly example in the sense of
Speaker 1: the aid that it gave everybody. So back in and Kalamazoo, Michigan,
Speaker 1: the city began to alter their sidewalks. They started to
Speaker 1: create curb cuts. So these are the first curb cuts.
Speaker 1: This is the sloped section on a herb that allows
Speaker 1: someone who's in a wheelchair to move from street level
Speaker 1: up to sidewalk level so they can cross streets. That
Speaker 1: part is not the silly part. That part is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: It gives people in wheelchairs the capability of navigating around
Speaker 1: their city in a way that they otherwise would have
Speaker 1: problems doing. So. That part is important, But the part
Speaker 1: that's a little more silly is that that those singing
Speaker 1: ramps allowed for other uses, Like if you happen to
Speaker 1: travel around on the scooter and you don't want to
Speaker 1: go in the street and there are no, i you know,
Speaker 1: no local laws that prevent you from going on sidewalks
Speaker 1: with a scooter, then these slopes allow you to do that.
Speaker 1: For parents who are pushing strollers, they can move from
Speaker 1: street to sidewalk. Those were not the primary intent of
Speaker 1: those curb cuts, but they are other benefits that rose
Speaker 1: up from that program. So there can be benefits beyond
Speaker 1: the primary intended purpose for accessible technology, both from the
Speaker 1: technology standpoint and the people who get to take advantage
Speaker 1: of it. So that's why I think it's an important
Speaker 1: concept and an important endeavor to pursue. Now, obviously we
Speaker 1: could talk in greater detail about all these different types
Speaker 1: of technology, and probably in the future I will cover
Speaker 1: them more in more depth. UM eye tracking technology I've
Speaker 1: talked about before in the past, but going into greater
Speaker 1: detail with that would be great because the tech has
Speaker 1: improved significantly since I first started playing around with it
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and it'd be great to sort
Speaker 1: of talk about the implications of that, but we've kind
Speaker 1: of run out of time, so I want to thank
Speaker 1: Ken again for the suggestion to do accessible Technology. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech,
Speaker 1: whether it's a type of tech, a company, a person
Speaker 1: in tech, maybe there's someone I should enter you let
Speaker 1: me know. Send me an email. The addresses tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Remember, you can also
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